Tag: PS4

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Game Ramblings #15 – Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir

More Info from Atlus

  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available on: PS3, Vita
  • Originally On: PS2
  • Genre: Action RPG, Platformer

The remakes continue, though in this case a remake of a much more niche title.  Following up on the Wii to Vita remake of Muramasa, Vanillaware and Atlus have now brought the even older PS2 title Odin Sphere to newer consoles.  The question then is whether this game is only for new players to the game, or will players of the original still enjoy the experience a second (or more…) time through.

The original release was great at the time, but suffered from some major performance issues on the PS2.  This is absolutely the first thing returning players are going to notice as an improvement.   Obviously the now 1080p redone visuals are fantastic, and Vanillaware’s art continues to not disappoint, but the framerate is significantly more stable than in its previous life.  There’s still a handful of spots where I noticed the framerate dip a bit, but it was never damaging to the experience, and certainly not to the level of the PS2 original.

For new players, this is definitely a great game to hop into Vanillaware’s games if you haven’t already.  The game takes place over five core books staring different main characters, and two wrap up books to complete the overarching story.  The five characters all have very different play styles, from close-range swords to mid-range chains up to crossbows, giving the 25+ hour experience a nice variety of different gameplay types.  The stories weave characters and locations together, and end with a split ending to wrap up, depending on how the player tackles the sixth book.

Combat takes place within arena-style side-scrolling rooms, typically containing between 4-10 enemies, as well as your occasional mid-boss or end-boss in each chapter.  Generally speaking, combat is extremely fast paced, more similar to fighting games than a typical RPG, with the player trying to do their best to string together high combo counts, and throwing various potions to apply ticking damage to enemies.  Overall, the skills available allow the player to customize their general attack rotation to fit their comfort level, adding a nice touch of depth to the system to bring it back in line with your more typical RPG games.

For returning players, it’s worth noting that there are two options, the Original Mode, which is simply the PS2 version with redone visuals.  There’s also the Leifthrasir mode, which includes additional areas, additional cutscenes, and a generally refined experience. As an example, here are the first few minutes of the Original vs Leifthrasir modes.  In general, I expect most returning players will enjoy the full remake variant, as it generally massages what was already a great experience into something more refined.

Then what’s the verdict on buying it?  Probably.  I suspect fans of fighting or action games will get more out of this than your typical RPG fan.  In general I never got to a point where I felt underleveled, so the fast-paced action is definitely more of the gameplay focus, with the RPG elements serving to enhance the gameplay, rather than being the core progression.  That said, fans of games with great art in general have a lot to love here, with the hand drawn visuals being even more stunning now in 1080p.  If it came down to a choice, I’d probably still play the Muramasa remake over this, but I don’t think you can really go wrong either way.

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Game Ramblings #14 – Mirror’s Edge Catalyst

More Info from EA

  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available on: Xbox One, Windows (Origin)
  • Genre: Action/Platformer

So, it finally happened; we got a new Mirror’s Edge.  Like the original, the core of this game is all about the first-person parkour-inspired platforming, and this prequel/origin story/retcon doesn’t change much about that.  What this one does do is throw away the linear progression in favor of an open world taking place entirely on the rooftops of Glass, which was also the city setting of the original.  So then the question is, did that change work? Did this game improve on some of the shortcomings of the original?

Going to get this out of the way fast.  Yes, the running that covers the core of the game is still fantastic.  Getting into a good flow running across the rooftops is still better in this game than in any other parkour-style game that I’ve played.  The open world nature of the game makes this even better, as learning routes between common hubs pushes you to get faster and faster travelling around the city, making that traversal fun enough to often skip using the fast travel that was available.  Some people have already complained that some of the traversal skills are locked behind an XP wall, but I never hit a point where I felt limited in what I could do, and the new skills that were unlocked pretty seamlessly integrated into how I was playing, as I was learning to use them one at a time and could experiment over extended play running around the city.

That said, the open world nature of the game did suffer from something akin to Assassin’s Creed syndrome.  There are some good side events scattered around.  The time trials of the original came back in the form of Dash events, and are still as good as ever as you continue to improve on your runs to 3 stars.  However, most of the side content is little more than fluff consisting of collecting orbs or doing more normal running segments that you would already be doing to get around the city.  While these do give XP for people grinding out upgrades, I got to the end of the game without needing the XP only incidentally doing these things while getting around between story missions.  For the completionist, this game has a lot, but for the people going straight through the story, these are skippable.

Unfortunately, the combat was still not that great here.  While it’s definitely a game about staying OUT of combat, there’s enough forced combat missions that the poor quality of the combat can be annoying at times.  They did get rid of the poor gun combat from the original, which is a plus, but even the hand to hand combat was not that great.  It basically consists of weak punches that I stopped using about 1/3 through the game, and strong attacks that can be effectively head on or from a side.  While there are some nice possibilities in the side attacks, particularly in causing enemies to stumble into and interrupt each other, the actual pace of the combat is generally slow and clunky.  Given how good the running is, it’s not a huge deal that combat is poor, but giving more possibilities of entirely avoiding the handful of forced combat areas would certainly have gone a good way in improving this situation.

So overall this game was pretty similar in outcome to the original.  The running portion of the game is still fantastic, the combat was still pretty poor, but the game overall is still highly enjoyable and worth playing.  While the open world change to the game flow has some hits and misses, the parts of the game that were still fun about the original are still maintained.  Just don’t expect the story to make any sense when connected to the original.

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Game Ramblings #11 – Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune Revisited

More info from Wikipedia

  • Platform: PS4 (Part of The Nathan Drake Collection)
  • Genre: Action-Adventure, Third-person shooter

Uncharted 4 came out, so I’m doing what everyone else is doing; not playing it!  Admittedly I’ve always had a bit of a habit of picking up games, having more games come out, and never finishing games that I got sidetracked from.  For as quick as they are, the Uncharted titles definitely fell into that category.  Because of that, I decided to start at the top and work my way through, beginning with Drake’s Fortune.  So then the question is, how has this one aged?

So I’ll start this off by immediately admitting I have a love/hate relationship with the gun play of this series.  I absolutely adore that I can run through the entire game with a 9mm pistol, using it as an effective sniper rifle and getting the vast majority of my kills as headshots.  That said, it absolutely bugs the game developer side of me that I can do this.  Throughout this play through, I only really ended up using other weapons on a need-to-use basis.  The shotgun and MP40 came into play in the zombie-ish end game segments when they had effectively infinite ammo.  The AK47 and MP4 became relatively effective pray and spray weapons into walls of enemies.  However, they never really felt more powerful on a per-hit basis than either of the main 9mm pistols, and the lack of ammunition available for other larger pistols meant that I really had no reason to use others.

On the other hand, I have a much less positive relationship with the actual environmental design when it comes to this.  Going through the levels, it’s extremely obvious when you’re about to get into gunfights.  In general, you’ll turn a corner, see a bunch of crates, concrete wall segments, etc in a flat area, and know that once you hit a trigger point, a bunch of dudes are going to come into the field to start attacking you.  Sure by end game you get snipers in vertical nests, but by and large the combat areas are extremely obvious and scripted.

That said, mechanically I would tend to lean towards the gun play still being very fun, but not more than above average.  At this point I feel like the Tomb Raider series has taken some of the strong points of this series, and with the addition of that game’s more defined stealth mechanics, there are definitely options out now that have vastly improved on the third-person tomb crawling.

So then the question I guess becomes, is this one still worth a play through if you’re new to the Sony world?  Aging aside, I’d say yes.  The story is a pretty solid Indiana Jones-style story, the characters are entertaining, there’s enough visual improvements for the game to still look pretty decent, and the craftsmanship of the experience is without question.  Much like the Jak series, the first in the series showed the promise of Naughty Dog’s path, and new people to the series shouldn’t skip it for its age.

And yes, sniper 9mm is a lot of fun.